January 24, 2012

"Don't be evil (Google)" tool

I’ve written that Google has plenty of public data to allow parts its new Search Plus Your World
feature to be inclusive of rival social networks like Facebook and
Twitter. Now, those networks are proving that true, through a new “Don’t
Be Evil” tool that lets anyone leverage Google’s own results to see
this.
The tool — a bookmarklet that works in your browser — changes three
parts of Search Plus Your World that currently shows information only
from Google Plus. These are:

People & Pages results

Google+ Sitelinks

Google+ Suggestions In Autocomplete

The tool can be found on the Focus On The User
web site. It was created, as the site says, by engineers at Facebook,
Twitter and MySpace, who in turn consulted with other unnamed social
networking companies. The “Don’t Be Evil” name of the tool comes from
Google’s philosophy of wanting to focus on what’s best for users, rather than what’s best for Google.
The companies behind the tool feel Google’s hasn’t focused on what’s
best for its users with Search Plus Your World. They have a good point.
But the tool makes this point better than all the debates that have
happened so far around Search Plus Your Word, because it shows what
Google could have done to better serve searchers, if it had wanted to.
Below, how to install the tool and how it works, once you’ve done so,
along with a revisiting of some of the issues it highlights.

Installing The Don’t Be Evil Bookmarklet

To get the tool, head to the site and look for the “Try a more relevant Google” button:

Clicking the button will make a new window appear, with a “don’t be evil” button that’s visible:
You click and hold on that button, then drag it to the bookmarks bar
in your browser (if you don’t see your bookmarks bar, look in your
browser’s options to make this visible):

Once it’s installed, you’ll see it on your on your bookmarks bar:
When you search on Google, you push that button to transform your
results, as I’ll cover next. By the way, I’ve tested this with both
Google Chrome and Firefox. It should also work with Safari. It doesn’t
work with Internet Explorer.

Problem: “People & Pages” Powered By Google+

One of the biggest issues I’ve had with Search Plus (my shorthand
name for Search Plus Your World) was the new “People and Pages on
Google+” results that appear for some searches. These can show up even
if you don’t have a Google+ account or are logged out of Google
entirely.
These are the first search results that I’ve ever seen on Google that
haven’t been inclusive of sources beyond Google, when those sources are
available. To understand more about this, and how it’s such a major
departure for Google, see my previous post, To Understand Google Favoritism, Think If Google+ Were YouTube.
Aside from favoring Google in a way that I’ve never seen before, I’ve
felt that the results simply weren’t providing the best information to
searchers at Google, especially given the prime real estate being given
to them. My previous story, Real-Life Examples Of How Google’s “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy, explains more about that.
The reason for the relevancy gap was simple. Google+ still lacks many
important or notable people that might be on the other social networks.
Indeed, until last week, Lady Gaga wasn’t on Google+
despite being one of the most followed people on Twitter and Facebook.
Her absence meant she’d never have a chance at being one of the music
recommendations for the People & Places results that Google was
showing.
Including other social accounts in People & Pages results would,
as I’ve written repeatedly, done what I expect of Google as a search
engine, delivered a great search experience. From one of my past posts:

I’d love to see is Google retool the social suggestions that
come up, so they aren’t simply Google+ “People & Pages” results
injected into Google but more inclusive of other social sites, as well.
Because that type of inclusive search product is what Google does well,
and what we expect for the company to provide.

Now the engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have done what I
expected Google to do, create a social suggestions search engine. Let’s
see some examples.

Solution: “People & Pages” Powered By Google Search

Let’s start with a search for music.
On the left, what you see from Google’s Search Plus. On the right, how
things change after you click the Don’t Be Evil bookmarklet:

The first set of arrows at the top show how
“People and Pages on Google+” is changed instead to “People and Pages
from the Social Web.”

The second set of arrows shows how for Britney Spears, rather than her Google+ profile being shown (where she has 1.6 million followers), her Twitter account
is displayed (where she has 12.6 million followers). Underneath her
Twitter account, links to her MySpace, Facebook and Tumblr accounts are
also shown.

The third set of arrows shows how for Snoop Dogg, rather than his Google+ profile being shown (with 1.4 million followers), his Twitter account (with 6.2 million followers) is shown. Underneath that, links to his MySpace, Facebook and Google+ accounts are displayed.

I’ll explain more about how each profile gets selected, but first, let’s do some more examples. Here’s a search for cars:

On the right, the Don’t Be Evil button transforms that listing into something useful, a pointer to Zuckerberg’s Facebook page (his Google+, Twitter and Quora pages are listed as alternatives.

Also notice the arrows. In this case, I was
signed-in to Google+, which is why an “Add to circles” button appear
next to the Google+ result. However, when the result was transformed to
show a Facebook listing, I got an indication showing that I was already
following Zuckerberg on Facebook (if I wasn’t, a Like button allowing me
to follow him would have appeared).

One more example, this time to show that
there’s more intelligence going on that just stripping out Google+ links
and swapping them for any other network. Here’s a search for Google:

Under that is Larry Page. His listing isn’t changed. It remains pointing to his Google+ page,
which makes sense. To the best of my knowledge, that’s the only place
he’s active socially. While LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts are
also shown for him, none of those seem to be real accounts for him.

What’s The Most Relevant Social Account To Show? Ask Google!

We could debate which is the most best social account to show for each of the examples above in various ways, such as:

Should it be based on followers? If so, in many cases, accounts on
the established social networks of Twitter and Facebook would easily
trump Google+ accounts, though not always.

Should it be based on activity? Britney hasn’t posted to Google+
since January 18. Her last tweets are more recent, as of January 21.
Does that count for more?

Should it be based on engagement? Even if Britney hasn’t been on
Google+ recently, perhaps her engagement with fans is better there?

Rather than try to figure all this out —
and potentially come under accusations they were selecting metrics to
favor their own social networks — the developers of the Don’t Be Evil
bookmarklet decided to let Google itself figure out which social account
was most relevant.

For example, let’s go back to how the listing for Snoop Dogg was changed:

What happens is that the bookmarklet looks
at which accounts are listed initially by Google in the People &
Pages section. It then does a search for the people or companies listed
to find which social profiles Google itself believes are most relevant,
in the first 100 results.

In the case of Snoop Dogg, the bookmarklet
sees that he’s listed as a People & Pages suggestion for a search on
“music.” It then conducts a search for “snoop dogg” on Google, to see
which social account Google lists first for him.

As you can see above, Twitter is the first
social account shown, so the bookmarklet rewrites Snoop Dogg’s
suggestion to link to his Twitter account. His MySpace account is found
next, so it’s listed as the first alternative. Facebook is found after
that, so it’s the second alternative. Google+ is found after that, so it
becomes the third alternative.

According to the tool’s FAQ page, it checks for links from any of these social networks:

CrunchBase (weird, I wouldn’t consider this a social network)

Github

Google+

Facebook

Flickr

Foursquare

FriendFeed

LinkedIn

MySpace

Quora

Stack Overflow

Tumblr

Twitter

All the information the tool finds comes solely from Google itself,
even the profile pictures, which are generated using Google’s own rich snippets testing tool, as the FAQ page explains.
Because only Google’s own information is being used, the tool can’t
patch up a key weakness, which is that all the suggestions are initially
based on people who are in Google Plus.
For example, you will never get Katy Perry as a music suggestion,
despite her being one of the most followed musicians on Facebook or
Twitter. That’s because she’s not on Google+, so she has no chance of
appearing as a suggestion to music-related queries. If she doesn’t get
suggested, then the tool can’t add her.

Problem: Autocomplete Profiles Only For Google+

Another feature of Search Plus that favors Google+ is within Google’s search box. As you type, the autocomplete feature of Google Instant
will suggest things you should search for. For notable or prominent
people, these suggestions may also include a link to their Google+
profile. For example, consider this search for Facebook chief operating
officer Sheryl Sandberg:Just typing in the word “sheryl” – when I was completely logged out of Google — was enough for it to suggest that I select her Google+ page,
where Sandberg last posted in September. That’s pretty preferential
treatment. Why should that be suggested over Sandberg’s personal web
site or another social profile?

Solution: Expand The Choices

The Don’t Be Evil button developers call the autocomplete suggestions
“typeahead” results. When you use their button, the typeahead
suggestion is changed. For Sandberg, her Facebook profile is shown:
The same logic I explained above is used to do this. Whatever Google
lists as the first social network for a search on Sandberg’s name, that
profile is used to go into the autocomplete box (though for me, it
should be her CrunchBase profile there, not her Facebook profile).
I’ve covered this in my earlier articles, but I’ll stress it again.
Pointing to Google+ profiles — and no other profiles — was a significant
change to favor Google+ than how Google operated in the past. Consider
this:

That’s where I’m starting a search for
“facebook.” I’ve only entered the “face” part and, already, Google
suggests that I go directly to the Facebook home page from within the
search box itself.

Google started offering these types of suggestions back in 2008 and 2009. You can still see it working today, if you disable Google Instant predictions within your search settings. Typing in Amazon, or Best Buy or New York Times brings up other examples of this.

Most people have Google Instant on, since
it’s the default, so they never see these type of “old” web link
suggestions. Instead, they get the new Google+ profile ones. Google
didn’t have to only push these, but it chose to.

Problem: Sitelinks Only For Google+

Ever done a search and noticed a bunch of
listings “indented” under the main listing? Those are called sitelinks.
For listings associated with Google+ accounts, they pick up special
sitelinks, their last two posts on Google Plus. Here an example for TV
Guide, what someone who is logged out of Google would see:

The two arrows point to the special Google+ sitelinks that are
appearing. This type of thing existed before Search Plus Your World
rolled out, though I can’t recall any formal announcement of it.
Certainly when Direct Connect for Google+ came out, there was nothing that highlighted these sitelinks as part of that.
In fact, the addition of them feels very odd, given how just over a
year ago, Google was showing sitelinks of a different sort for other
social networks. For example, here’s how a search for Twitter was
suggesting people our news editor Barry Schwartz should follow:

Solution: New Social Sitelinks

The Don’t Be Evil button replaces the Google+ sitelinks similarly to how other changes are done. Here’s TV Guide again:

Rather than two Google+ sitelinks being
shown, only a single one appears. In this case, it’s a link to TV
Guide’s Twitter profile, since that’s the first profile that the tool
finds when doing a Google search for “tv guide.” A link to TV Guide’s
Facebook profile follows as an alternative.

Which Way Forward?

As I’ve explained in many articles over the
past two weeks, I’ve been pretty disturbed by Google’s promotion of
Google+ within its search pages.

The “People & Pages” results, if
they’re intended as a promotion for Google+, still come across as if
they are regular search results — results that I think Google users
assume come from across the web. They do not. The come only from Google+
itself.

You could argue with better labeling, that
type of promotion might work better. But that still leaves questions
about why Google+ profiles are being pushed within Google’s search
suggestions, rather than links to other pages from across the web. The
links shown there aren’t necessarily the most relevant suggestions to be
shown.

Google, in particular its executive chairman Eric Schmidt, has argued
that it doesn’t have all the data it needs to include other social
services in the way it does for Google Plus. The failure to reach a deal
with Facebook; the failure to renew a deal with Twitter, these have
prevented the social signals it needs from being used, Google has said.

The Don’t Be Evil tool demonstrates this
isn’t the case, that there are social signals that Google already can
find which could be used, if it wants.

Of course, if Google had done so what the
Don’t Be Evil tool is doing now — incorporated links to Facebook and
Twitter after they’ve rejected deals — potentially Google could have
been accused of scraping content from them without permission. Indeed,
that was one of the things Facebook suggested last year in what was widely seen as a smear campaign.

I put that to Facebook when I talked with
the company last week about the tool. I was told Facebook saw a
difference between taking public signals to build a competing social
service — as it felt Google was doing — and using those signals as part
of a search service that points outward.

I was also assured that if Google wanted to
do the types of things that the Don’t Be Evil tool is now doing,
Facebook wouldn’t complain.

We’ll see. I’ll be following up with Google. In the meantime, you can read more at the Focus On The User web site, and there’s also an overview video available:

John Battelle also has a nice write-up with his perspective here, and Techmeme has a round-up of coverage from others.

Google’s Unusual Balancing Act

It can seem confusing — even hypocritical —
for services like Facebook and Twitter to not release their public data
more fully to anyone (including Google) without demanding deals, then
complain they don’t feel represented enough in search results.

It can also seem odd that both of those
companies might favor themselves in their own social networks, not
include Google+, yet demand that Google somehow be “fair” to them.

The challenge Google faces, however, is
that it operates both a social network and a search engine. The Google+
social network does compete with Facebook and Twitter, and anyone would
expect that it should favor itself.

The Google search engine, however, was founded on the idea that it should be fair to all. That is, after all, what a good search engine should do
— provide the best results, not the results best for its parent
company. The continued Google+ification of Google’s search results is
bringing that fairness into question.

Potentially, that’s an anti-trust issue
(and Facebook, as the dominant social service, might find itself
similarly under pressure to open up to competitors). But anti-trust
issues aside, it’s simply a trust issue. Will users trust that Google’s
results are doing the right thing by them?

Disclaimer

In case you didn't notice, the blog is "Into the Mind", so actually you are in my mind, in my territory. I post about things that are going on in my mind & if have a genuine problem or suggestion, please do tell me, but in general, Sayonara!